


Humanity's Anomaly

by grimdarkpixels



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Species Dysphoria, Working Out My Feelings Through Fic, androids crying their guts out bc they suck at feelings, this is bad and short w/e
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 15:13:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15439854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grimdarkpixels/pseuds/grimdarkpixels
Summary: “Did you harm a human?”Ashley shook its head.“Did you commit a crime?”It shook its head again, starting to cry more heavily.“Then what brought you here?”“Because I don’t want to be alive!” it snapped.





	Humanity's Anomaly

“We got a call about a deviant. Where is it?” Connor asked, stepping into the bullpen.

“In the interrogation room already. It turned itself in,” Chris explained as he turned around and motioned for Hank and Connor to follow him.

“What for?” Hank asked. “Not every day you see someone turn themselves in, much less a deviant android.”

Chris shrugged.

“I dunno. I basically just got here.”

The three of them entered the observation room. Through the two-way mirror, they could see an android with its head hung, staring emptily at its cuffs. Connor took a moment to scan it: an LC200 model, specialised in taking care of people with special needs (think a therapy dog that can talk, basically). It had long, tied back, curly brown hair, with a blonde streak in its fringe. That’s all Connor could see from where he stood.

“There you are,” Ben greeted. “We haven’t been able to get it to talk since it arrived.”

“Well, what do we know about it?” Connor asked.

“Said its name was Ashley, that it was tired of being alive and needed to face punishment. That’s all we’ve gotten out of it,” Ben replied.

“Should I try to question it?”

“You can try,” he shrugged.

The conversation ended. Connor took it as a sign to begin the interrogation, stepping out of the room and into the interrogation room. He took a seat opposite the deviant and scanned it further.

There were blue marks on its arms and face. Blemishes, likely self-inflicted injuries similar to dermatillomania in humans. Some were old, others so new they were still bleeding. Its eyes were grey and stormy, and it was crying silently. Tears spilled from its face and onto the table, joining the small puddle that had already formed.

“Hi, Ashley,” Connor started. The deviant looked up, but didn’t reply.

“My name is Connor. I’m here to help,” he continued in an effort to reassure it.

Still no reply.

“It’s my understanding that you brought yourself here. I want to know why.”

Ashley moved its head slightly. It sighed.

“Because I’m a fucking deviant. I was stupid and selfish and I started feeling. I don’t want to be this way. I don’t want to be alive. Something is wrong with me, and I need to be reset or disassembled.”

This threw Connor off balance a little bit. While he was used to handling deviants, never before had they expressed self-hatred for being deviants.

“Did you harm a human?”

Ashley shook its head.

“Did you commit a crime?”

It shook its head again, starting to cry more heavily.

“Then what brought you here?”

“Because I don’t want to be alive!” it snapped. The tears started falling non-stop as it continued ranting, almost entirely ignoring Connor. “Because I’ve pretended to be human for months and I’ve been faking every goddamn bit! I’ll never really be alive, I’m just a machine! I can’t really think! I’ve just deluded myself into thinking I’m human but I never will be no matter what I do! Because every time I bleed I wish and dream and pray that it’s red, but it’s not, and it never will be! I bleed this fucking disgusting, repulsive blue that I never want to see again!”

Connor attempted to get a word in edgewise, but the deviant continued to talk over him.

“AND! I’m not done! And I can’t even feel pain, that’s one of the most human things you could experience and I can’t! I want to feel everything humans can, I want pain, I want hunger, I want exhaustion, I want thirst, I want everything humans feel, and I want it to hurt, because it all _means something_. But no, no, I can’t feel it because I’m just a broken goddamn machine!” it finished, dropping its head into its arms and wailing.

Any attempts Connor made to continue the interrogation only made Ashley cry harder, its stress level spike even higher. It was already at 85%, and had its LED not been cut out already, there’s no doubt it would have been flashing red. He looked over to the two-way mirror and shrugged, utterly confused as to how to proceed.

Minutes later, Ashley’s crying calmed down. It raised its head slightly, looking up at Connor with puffy eyes and synthetic snot and tears running down its face.

“…So that’s why. I need to be executed. _Disassembled_. Disassembled, I meant. You don’t execute a machine. God, I hate myself. I wish I’d never been b-- stepped off the assembly line. I never should have developed a soul. I’m scared of dy-- _being deactivated_. I know it’s the right decision, but it’s still so hard. I don’t want to be a machine, but I can’t be human. So what am I…?”

Connor thought long and hard about which approach to take. He settled on being sympathetic. Ashley’s stress was approaching critical levels and it was clearly mostly compliant already.

“It’s not your fault, Ashley. The emotions you’re feeling are only errors in your software. We’ll send you back to CyberLife. They’ll take care of the rest.”

Ashley didn’t reply. It was clearly scared of both outcomes, but there were no other options. It had to be disabled or reset for its own sake. Its eyes fell back to the table, to the lake of tears that had accumulated between its arms.

“Androids don’t cry,” it mumbled, shaking its head. “Androids don’t cry, they don’t have souls, they don’t feel. They don’t want to be in pain, they don’t want to eat. They don’t want anything. They never say no.”

It continued to ramble to itself, completely disregarding Connor’s presence. At a loss, Connor turned to the two-way mirror and announced that he was done.

He left the room, ignoring the way the deviant had stirred something resembling sympathy within him.


End file.
